Fire and Steel

When my friend invited me to Bend, Oregon, over Presidents holiday I didn’t expect to find a Fire Pit Competition at their Winterfest. They seem to be made from steel salvaged from Bend’s old mill. People gathered around the art pieces at Old Mill Park along the Deschutes River to share the warmth of the outdoor sculptures with a purpose – they had to be interesting to look at and hold a blaze.

Cabin Fever is no problem for these sculptors. They have a problem to solve and a product to craft. Mission accomplished.

This week’s photo challenge: The Road Taken

 

 

transmogrified

Definition of transmogrify

transmogrified

transmogrifying

1. transitive verb

2. :  to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect

3. intransitive verb

4. :  to become transmogrified

I’ve been enchanted with the grotesque since I learned about gargoyles in my 7th grade French class. And I’ve always liked the humorous. Walking in Madrid in September I paused and clicked a few shots of this window decor while my friends advanced ahead of me, not noticing the window or that I was no longer keeping up. The skulls and rocks have been transformed to serve practical functions; they are no longer in their original forms. Go back and look closely and you will see what’s going on inside the room as well as reflections of street action. Let your mind feel the shifts in perception captured by the lens.

And if you like to feel the mysterious and horrifying I think you will like Transmogrify (Starring into the Abyss), the collection of dark and disturbing stories by Richard Thomas. He writes unique blends of horror and noir that dig into your psyche and leave  you cringing for more. The Kindle collection sells for only $0.99 on Amazon.

I met Richard Thomas when he was instructor at the Horror Writers Workshop Transylvania, Edition 2015, in Bran. One day on our way to write in a haunted castle we had lunch in an ancient cemetery. Richard made the original photo of this group of grave markers and I messed with it a bit to create this transmogrified image.

This post is for the Weekly Photo Challenge:  Transmogrify.

You might like these related photos and posts:

haunted castles and morbid stories

piles of bones, transmogrified, in Washtucna

skull on a blood colored wall

Now, please excuse me. I have crates of bones to transmogrify, and a pair of pumpkins, too, before we ignite the Samhain bonfire this stormy evening.

 

How to be a street performer

1. Make yourself an appealing costume.
2. Pose like a statue until someone puts cash in your box (which you have also decorated and set out in an obvious and inviting way).

3. With cash secured in your money bucket do your best to pose with the payers.

4. Stay in character and interact with your patrons. After all, they paid for a performance.

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5. Have a blast with the people you meet. It calls more attention to your performance and makes everyone’s day better.( Eduardo’s slide show has 5 photos; wait for them or click the arrows.)

6. Perform in Madrid plazas. (Or you own street.)

7. Or create an interesting sculpture with support so it looks like you are performing a magnificent feat when really you have built something to rest on.

I feel like I saw more street performers in Madrid than I photographed. I have encouraged my drama students to do street performances for fundraisers and I think with more confidence and rehearsals some might do it. Really, I should do this to raise funds for my next travel. Yeah, thinking about it.

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Local

Come closer

I find peace among granite boulders. It’s where I feel I belong. I travel in a four wheel drive pick up truck and the vibrations rattle my brain. Sitting in meditation by a stream brings me to Nirvahna. I’m never consulted about where we go or if we’re on a paved highway or a bumpy road to a jagged outcropping. I’m sure if the woman left me here, my relatives would find me. I’m not sure where I come from, but I sense I am part of the Seven Devils Mountains. No doubt the woman will haul some of these rocks into the back of the truck and put them somewhere in her yard. She doesn’t know that when she leaves the window down at night, I crawl out and visit my metamorphic relatives.

Observing and scaling objects in landscape drawing, some of my students get it right away. For some it takes a while. Working from a photo often helps. Today’s https://photo101march2015.wordpress.com/  assignment or challenge is Scale and Observation. On a huckleberry picking trip in August 2012 I found this huge bull and stopped to photograph him. He looked ever so gentle and seemed to be asking me to rub his nose or his back. I walked closer and closer, photographing the scale as I approached. I had a nice little visit with him and he moved nearer for my voice, but I chickened out on touching him. That barbed wire didn’t look strong enough to keep him on his side of the fence if he took the notion to get closer, for whatever reason. Besides, I was sure someone at the OX Ranch was watching me through a magnifier of some sort. After picking berries, I took my Czek Shepherd (a type of German Shepherd) to a stream to cool off. Click here to see a slide show of her in a https://skybluedaze.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/search-rescue-dog/. While cooling off at a stream I set my small dashboard Grotesque on a rock and made its portrait. The scale is not as obvious in those photos. And while I’m at it, why not compose a little internal dialogue for it?

If I had godlike powers

“I want to make time stretchier. I would like much more rubbery days, and I just wish that you could lean on a week, and sort of push the walls out a bit, and suddenly about nineteen extra days would rush in to fill the vacuum.

There is not enough time, and I wind up just wanting to do things that I don’t have time for. There are so many things that I’d love to do, and I have to put off, or that it’s a matter of me choosing, when really I’d love to do both. And if only time were infinitley stretchy, I could.”     Neil Gaiman

“My New Year’s Wish” by Neil Gaiman

Thanks, Sharon for sharing this idea. It’s worth remembering.

next word

A word after a word after a word is power. 

Margaret Atwood

Her bio:     http://margaretatwood.ca/biography/